William Morris and music: Craftsman's art?

Though the project was never realised, presumably because of Morris's declining health, the audacity of such a planned excursion into music printing is impressive. In the event the important collection was not published in full until 1962 by Musica Britannica,32 and one is left to speculate about what it might have been like to use a Kelmscott publication in music-making.

Dolmetsch himself summed up his debt to Morris much later:

So far, William Morris, our leader, had not heard any of this music. He did not go to concerts. Burne-Jones had taken him to recitals and orchestral concerts but, however much he tried, he who had mastered so many arts remained impervious to music. It was not his fault, however, but that of the music which had been offered to him; his direct fundamental genius could not be interested in the conventionalities and display of executive ability that had nearly driven poetry out of music.

One memorable day in 1894 Burne-Jones brought Morris to one of my old English performances in Dulwich. He understood this music at once, and his emotion was so strong that he was moved to tears! He had found the lost Art! He heard plenty of it henceforth. and on his deathbed summoned me to Kelmscott House, to let him hear once more the music he loved.

A sort of informal club had come to exist in London, containing all the poets and creative geniuses then alive: William Morris, Selwyn Image, Herbert Horne, Arthur Symons, W Yates, Swinburne, Sturge Moore, Laurence Binyon and others were my friends. I spent much time in their company. Their ideas filled my mind, and I became capable of illustrating their words with sympathetic music, or rather of crystallising the latent music enshrined in them.33

Even allowing for Dolmetsch's overstatement of the extent to which he awakened Morris's musical sensibilities, this is eloquent testimony indeed, and illustrates the extent to which an examination of the influence of Morris on Arnold Dolmetsch illustrates the significant if indirect contribution made by William Morris in a wholly unexpected area of activity.

Notes

1. Mary Lago, ed.: Burne-Jones talking (London: John Murray, 1982), p.69. 2. JW Mackail: The life of William Morris (London: Longman Green St Co., 1899) vol.2. 3. Ibid. vol.1, p.72.

4. The Standard (Monday 5 October 1896).

5. Aymer Vallance: The life & work of William Morris (London: Studio Editions, 1986), p.428.

6. Ibid., p.429. 7. Mackail: vol.l, pp.299-301. 8. Ibid. vol.1, pp.299-301. 9. Ibid. vol.l, pp.299-301. 10. Ibid. vol.l, pp.299-301.

11. EP Thompson: William Morris: romantic to revolutionary (London: Pantheon, 1976), p.635.

12. Paul Thompson: The work of William Morris (London: Quartet, 1977). 13. Peter Stansky: Redesigning the world (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1985). 14. Ibid., p.113. 15. Letter to Emma Morris (13 April 1849), in Norman Kelvin, ed.: The collected letters of William Morris (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984) vol.1, p.6.

16. The Archives Room, Marlborough College, Wiltshire.